Jennifer A. Holmes, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has urged the court to take the case, says she hopes the conversations taking place nationally will push the justices in that direction.
Doing so gives the court an “opportunity to show that they’re not insensitive to issues of race,” Holmes said. And courts are all the time confronting workplace discrimination claims involving use of the racial slur, she said. The question for the justices, she said, is just whether someone who experiences an isolated instance of the racial slur can “advance their case beyond the beginning stage.”
Supreme Court Considers Hearing Case on Most onenewspage.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from onenewspage.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Supreme Court consider hearing a case on most offensive word
If the justices agree, they could decide whether the use of one word alone allows an employee to sue under Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Author: JESSICA GRESKO Associated Press Published: 8:09 AM CDT May 13, 2021 Updated: 8:09 AM CDT May 13, 2021
WASHINGTON
Editor s Note: Includes references throughout to racist language.
Robert Collier says that during the seven years he worked as an operating room aide at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, white nurses called him and other Black employees “boy. Management ignored two large swastikas painted on a storage room wall. And for six months, he regularly rode an elevator with the N-word carved into a wall.
Jennifer A. Holmes, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has urged the court to take the case, says she hopes the conversations taking place nationally will push the justices in that direction.
Doing so gives the court an “opportunity to show that they’re not insensitive to issues of race,” Holmes said. And courts are all the time confronting workplace discrimination claims involving use of the racial slur, she said. The question for the justices, she said, is just whether someone who experiences an isolated instance of the racial slur can “advance their case beyond the beginning stage.”